Long time readers… if I ever posted that post I meant to post.. will know all about “Bad Matt.” Bad Matt, as you might well imagine, is an evil bastard! What is the unspeakable evil that Matt is giving to partaking in? Well Matt has been known to spend large sums of money on books, music, DVDs and.. of course.. computer and studio related stuff. And today my fine friends… bad matt has struck again!

That’s right..  well you see it all started when I went to a little Boston Media Maker tech thing, MediaTechTonic. This was a little workshop sorta thing, led by David Tames, that explored WordPress. WordPress is a “blog engine” that’s very popular… In the circles I run in, it is the most popular. Indeed my podcasts, and this blog, run on WordPress. A long standing problem I’ve had is not really knowing how to do “theme design.” Theme design is.. well its like web design with a content management system… so you want to know  your xhtml, css, dom, and what have you.. and then you probably would like to know a little php… and um.. a bit about how WordPress works. 

Theme design has proven, at least for me, to be a major pain in the butt.. in part because I’ve had such a difficult time finding one source of information that sorta pulls it all together. David’s presentation..  gave an overview of some of the issues..  and was enough to really open my eye’s to the power of WordPress. Further, though he didn’t totally recommend it.. he sorta did: WordPress for Dummies.. which is so far the only good source I’ve found that brings all that together in one place.

Next Day:

So of course on my trip to the book store.. I made my way over to the WordPress for Dummies.. but…  Well the badness of bad Matt was such that I didn’t even stop there! Oh no, I went over to the music section! In the music section I found my copy of “The Indie Bible.”

If you’re an independent music person, the Indie Bible is a must have.. It’s basically a giant directory of resources for the independent sound person. It lists, as a for instance, radio stations, podcasts, periodicals, and what not.. that will play / review the work of independent sound people… and it does this by genera and location…

I suppose its worth saying something about where I’m at as it relates to this? As we speak the main thing I’m working on.. if I’m working on anything at all.. It’s at least the preamble to a project of some sort.. that I’d actually ask people to spend there hard earned money on… and of course I don’t know what the project will look like.. even what it will be actually… just that this is roughly my goal..  (which is not to say there aren’t a zillion ideas, much of which can be found scattered around this blog)

To be successful in the commercial aspects of this project… It would make a hell of a lot of sense if I did something to promote the works I’m currently giving away for free. This way.. you can just go check it out you’re self, and if you dig it, maybe you’d be interested in the project I’m now embarked on. So.. if I were able to sorta run a publicity type campaign while I’m working on what I have to work on.. to sorta get the word out.. then I could potentially build a fan base for the upcoming projects product cycle. So that’s the thinking anyway.

If you’d like to check out some of my music you can, of course, go to mattsearles.com/music where you can find 2CDs worth of free music. 

As I write these words I’m watching a thing on the Beat writers, on Ovation. I’m feeling possessed by an inspiration for the adventure ahead.

What does art need to do today? What does art need to be today? What is the job of the artist today? What must we give voice to?

I am a man of many worlds, and different worlds seem to have different ways of relating to the cosmic round.  

A while latter:

I play around with my guitar. I am off the rails, though not manically, more poetically. Or seeking in that sorta way. Give up on thought, give up on preconceptions, exterminate rational thought..  Just feel it, just hear it, just open up to it. See it man. That’s the spirit of it. Can your eyes, ears, and whatever.. is that enough to navigate the spaces of the unknown that lye just inches out of sight? I’m not saying don’t think just think different.

Think as if thinking where an art form. Can life be lived as an art form: from childhood, to middle age, to the grave?

Embrace the anarchy so that your sensitivity might reach out to future values that are now seeking to express them selves to our people. Be one of the hearing to these voices. Fight to stay open.

Life is anarchy, reality is anarchy, nature is anarchy. Anarchy is nothing but an existential relationship to cognition. Anarchy is a seeking of a new cognition. Cognitive dissonance is transient, as is anarchy for that matter.

I’m a digital artist.. well analog to.. or traditional media to.. but the digital space is.. an area where I specialize. Digital, Analog.. the tools you use have implications on how you can work. Now that my studio has moved a few light years forward.. I find myself in a space of possibilities unexplored.. 

A few latter:

I’ve had some sort of a studio for about 10 years… and so I have work dating back at least that long. Not all of that work is so great.. In some cases the changing technological landscape dates the old work.. and sometimes the evolution of my self as artist dates old work. Still.. there are often golden seeds left behind.. dreams still waiting be brought to full flower. And this is at least part of where my dreams turn today.

Yet a little bit latter:

So something that’s pretty groovy about Ableton Live is.. you can import audio, find the tempo of it.. and match it to the tempo of something else. What this does is allow me to use all that old work as the raw building blocks of new work. Bringing this idea into my work.. has many implications.

My first steps in exploring this.. really.. was ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures, though I suppose my very first project to do something along these lines can be found in G. G. Moe Cow Gay.

These kinds of ideas, of course, are not terribly new or radicle at this point in time. It is, after all, the life blood of DJ culture / certain strands of electronic music. Though you could call me an electronic musician.. I don’t actually listen to too much of that kinda thing. For me.. most of where I’d hear that sorta thing is with someone like Frank Zappa.. which is very different.

Generally we associate these sorts of ideas with DJ / Electronic Music culture.. and Hip Hop. True music snobs will associate it with avant guard music since the second world war..

I think of my approach to music making as.. often at least, being like that of a painter.. And that makes it so I’m not really approaching music from anything like a traditional vantage point..  at least on some levels. And there’s clearly something in this that allows me to take the painting metaphor to the next level.

Latter that night:

The land scape of possibilities opening up to me is much broader then what I’ve described here thus far. I suppose the trouble is.. with the new possibilities comes new challenges, new struggles. That’s maybe both good and bad. The bad of it is largely just a sort of negative point of view.. the realization that in taking this path.. I’ll have to start from the begging… which is a way of saying.. all the muscle I’ve built up thus far.. all the skills.. I’ll have to leave them be while I try and develop all new skills… and as I head out on this adventure I’ll be demoted from master to novice.

This over states things, to be sure, but it is the psychological truth that lys at the heart of an artist trying to take a giant step into the unknown. The deeper truth, of course, is that broadening your horizons is growth.. so it can only add to what your doing.

I feel some need, have been feeling it for sometime.. to jump off the deep end and go nuts.. to try and loose myself in a grand new adventure.. that is basically a lot of mess making.

Painting is maybe a good metaphor… with paint, you could realize a highly photorealistic painting.. one where the brush strokes became invisible… a realistic rendering of whatever. The world of photorealistic art, or art that aspires in this sort of direction, is very large indeed, but it isn’t the whole universe. People who think of this as the highest realization an artist could aspire.. when confronted by impressionism they freak.. never mind any kind of abstract expressionism.. modernism or postmodernism….. 

And you see these artists.. paint splashed all over the place.. making such a mess of the canvas.. ahh.. but do you feel the energy and the emotion in there? You see this is sorta what I’m talking about in my sound work.. moving from realism to abstract expressionism, or something of this order.

Well sort of. The point is I want to create work that has that kind of explosive energy.. whirling madness.. I want to create work that’s like.. some building held together by Elmer’s glue. I want the quality of the construction to be expressive.. I want my way of relating to media aesthetics to be expressive.

What I’m describing is probably not like anything you’ve ever encountered before because, after all, I am thinking in the terms of “formal elements” which have nothing to do with style…  

A few latter:

In the long term, the way this project will work is.. I’ll basically run around trying lots of different things.. lots of little adventures… experiments. These projects will not be “whole projects” but mini projects. It will be “lets think of something that might yield interesting results.” The results don’t have to stand on there own.. they will simply be raw building blocks of other projects.

Many hours latter, arguably the next day:

The Challenge

I feel cursed with a monstrous ambition. I’m on an adventure seeking some kind of greatness, a greatness that is beyond conventional notions of the possible. As my ambitions present me there challenges, the fear comes over me: am I up to them? This moment in my artist’s story is one of horizons pushing back, of limits opening up. To achieve a true greatness one must develop a technical mastery, one must speak with a virtuosity, and one must also have something worth saying. In the confines of the limited, the challenge of great mastery and virtuosity is much less then in the world of the limitless. And so there is the nagging question “am I nuts to turn in this direction?” Do I have the energy to make this journey?

There are the questions of my inadequacies. Nietzsche advises ‘beware in throwing out your demons that you don’t throw out the best thing in you,’ a wisdom that suggests it’s your demons that make your virtues great. I only wish my feelings of inadequacies were not so great… and of course these feelings are exhasterbated by entering into this new larger space.

I’ve been listening to this sonic experiment.. one that I plan to post in a podcast shortly… along with some commentary on the matter. It strikes me as amazing, and yet at other moments not so much. There is the feeling.. in working this way.. that “bad craft” or “bad production values” do have an expressive quality.

If you read me at length, or even listen to me at length, you will realize that I have a rather large and complex philosophical framework inside of which I think– perhaps even outside of which. This framework, it seems to me, is probably the shape of my art to come.

I started off talking about working with Ableton Live.. and really all of this can be seen as about this; about the new vistas Live opens up to me. If my experiment is as good and amazing as I feel it is, when I’m feeling good about it, then the fear of the challenge is not really the issue it appears to be. I have some hope, that in charting this new territory, I can still lean on the virtuosity and mastery that is already in my possession. If this is so, then the new work will, at least on some level, just be like new colors to old work.

What I love about my experiment is the mad guitar.. perhaps more then anything. It is a heavy metal thing gone off the rails.. exploding through space..

One of the challenges working in this way brings is.. the element of chance. If you construct raw building blocks that do not have an awareness of one another.. that then get brought together.. there interrelationships are products of chance. When you bring these parts together.. you have different choices for how to bring them together.. which is perhaps like a chance to play with how you want to frame those interrelationships. The positive effect of chance is that it can bring your work to places that your conscious will would not have brought it.

The main thread of my electronic music is conscious will.. I would describe it as a process of painting where you paint your self into a corner.. where being in that corner… the complexity of how to wrestle with your predicament grows stronger till you get to a point where you don’t really know if you can pull it off.. and in this tension great things can happen. The particulars of the predicament are, it would seem, analogous to chance.. they are are a way of chance speaking to your work.. and the effect of this is like a dialectic between conscious will and chance.. or conscious will and mystery. Still, the chance of it might be thought of as illusionary.. as it is really the effect of your own actions, of your own will..  It is, in someways, the voice of the unconscious.

A while ago I was reading a book by Leonard Bernstein, that explored the interrelationships of linguistics and music. I think I must have been listening to this while working on Deep Space Adventures, because I began to think about the implications of this on ideas of the remix in art and music.

It’s sort of interesting.. I mean imagine that you have these raw building blocks that are the products of various processes. As our compositions / productions take us in and out of the spaces of these building blocks.. we are recontextualizing the building blocks. On the other hand.. lets say the building blocks where material you were familiar with… Lets say, just as a for instance, the building blocks were in many cases musical projects that I gave away for free. In this case, these would probably be the bits of my work you would most likely be familiar with.. that you are now experiencing in a transmogrified form.

If you imagine that what a thing is is how it contrasts with its context.. we are talking about shifting contextual ecologies.

As I write something else comes to mind, a theme in my work. There’s this kind of range.. between the cliche and new or the never heard before. The cliche is somehow dead.. we experience it as “oh yeah, I’ve heard that one before, and probably way to many times at that.” We are deaf to it. When I see this in films it drives me nuts.. and is probably the number one thing I hate about so many Hollywood films. But if you can somehow experience the cliche, as if for the first time, you may find a symbolic resonance in it: There is a reason it got to be a cliche after all. The funny thing is.. in that Hollywood film, it would seem the film maker has no idea about that symbolic resonance.. and has actually rendered the cliche in such a way that it has not connotation sorta relationship to the deeper resonance. 

Some time ago, I blogged about my philosophical process. One of the ideas is that you have these ideas / concepts that are 3 dimensional models.. the problem I have is I want you to experience it as a 3 dimensional model.. As I talk about this or that thing, and try to explain it’s implications, I do wish your awareness of the thing could be one that goes beyond whatever it is that I’m talking about. I want you to see the 3 dimensional object of it.. and be able to connect it to other objects your self.. and see the implications your self.

I often feel that in explaining a concept.. I’m doing so in one context.. but the concepts implications have different effects in multiple contexts.. and I feel as if I have to paint the whole painting for you.. in order for you to see the whole picture.. which of course leads me to writing very long blog entries.. like this one I suppose.

It is interesting to think.. that the remixing of stuff, as I’m speaking about.. is analogous to this problem. Another words.. the recontextualization of the building block, is like seeing the 3 dimensional conceptual model in a new context.

Well I suppose this entry is long enough as it stands.. so be done with it! 

Oh, let me leave you with some video ReMix sorta projects by EBN.

[ editors note: I believe this blog entry was started yesterday, but I was to tired to finish it last night, so here it is now ] 

I’m still sick mind you, which roughly translates into barely capable of doing much of anything, but.. sitting at a computer isn’t always one of those things you can’t quite do.. I suppose it depends on the cognitive demands it places on you.. actually.. its about 6 30 PM, as I write, and I’m feeling about ready to just collapse… so maybe I’m pushing it a little by writing this.

So… I wont go into all of it.. but I got Digital Performer going on this computer.. The first challenge was just getting it to work right. You would think this would be pretty straight forward.. but it proved its self more difficult then that.

I’ve been using DP for a number of years now, though never as my primary DAW, and I must confess that it still represents something of challenge to me.. Though I feel up to the challenge, it’s pretty clear that I’m in the early stages of meeting that challenge. If the size of the manuel is any indication of the level of complexity we are dealing with, the Digital Performer manuel comes out to well over 1000 pages. Fortunately ones doesn’t have to read quite all of that to get up and running. 

The complexity level is made worse by the fact that I have the full Komplete bundle to worry about.. and for the moment, without the benefit of Kore. I’m feeling, as I scratch Komplete 5’s surface, the need Kore addresses… which is to say.. how do you manage / navigate your way through the thousands (is it 7,500?) of instruments and sounds you now have on call?

At the moment I’m lucky if I can figure out how to load the instrument up into DP, let alone edit it’s MIDI sequence.. I’ve set up some mixer routing stuff.. which DP is a little more sophisticated then the versions of Cubase I’ve used in the past.. though I understand the latest version of Cubase has moved some steps forward on this front.

Basically.. in approaching these kinds of projects you ask questions like.. well first you select your sound pallets.. which is to say what instruments you want to use (which has something to do with what sounds might go well together), and possibly which effects.. and go about a little mixing, and a little sequencing, and in a short space of time.. it starts writing its self. But.. when you’re in a position where you have thousands of new sounds to choose from.. and you’re not entirely sure what’s up with the effects you have to choose from.. it’s a little harder to move forward…

As much as I’ve read great things about DP’s effects, new effects that have some since last I used it, I must confess that I’m feeling a little underwhelmed..  now mind you I say this as someone who hasn’t spent more then 15 minutes trying to come up with a decent reverb sound… so please take this with a grain of salt.. but my impression is that the effects bundled with Digital Performer are.. perhaps good enough to get you started, but probably not enough to get you all the way there.. to put it a certain sorta way.

All of which is enough to give me a moment of depression..  if not for the fact.. and this is funny as they don’t really emphasize this too much, that Kore comes with 32 different effects.. including a number of reverb and delays sounds! So it may not mean that I have to go out there and look at effects packages just yet. 

In truth, however, I don’t think you can normally expect to buy a DAW and have all your bases covered, right out of the Box. I guess I was hoping that the need would be less pressing.. I have, as I may have mentioned in recent blog entires, been at least taking a look at various effects bundles that might add something to where I’m at.. It’s just that.. 

Latter that night: 

Moving from Cubase to Digital Performer 

Perhaps I was over stating how much I have to learn when it comes to DP. The truth is that I’ve simply forgotten a lot, and much of that comes back pretty fast.. Still, I have far to go.. Much of which has to do with knowing the best way to approach certain problems.

It’s often said that a given DAW is like a religion.. they each have there own way of going about things.  I use enough of them so that it’s mostly intuitive for me, picking up a new one.. But what of the DP way versus the Cubase way?

For the moment DP feels a lot more unwieldy to me.. I say for the moment because I’m quite sure that if I knew better… it would be a lot less unwieldy.. It’s like going from a master of one thing to an amateur of another.. you’re a lot more effective as a master. 

To some extent.. I might have said gong from Reason to DP + Komplete, and I’ll explain why.

Without really knowing what instruments are what, without really being orientated to this new world.. I found myself jumping in with certain presumptions. For instance.. when I think of my music production I think of certain categories of instruments.. of sounds, that I would conventionally mix together.. and roughly, based off what I know of the Komplete bundle.. I jump into those instruments which might have sounds that fit that need.. but without any clue as to how the specifics might work out.

So I start with Battery, loading up a rock type drum kit. I don’t bother to figure out anything with regards to how Battery works.. I just want to load it up.. There’s not really that much in the rock category of drum kit, as it turns out.. and the resulting kit I’m not entirely sure how to be expressive with.. This for two reasons.. #1 A certain cluelessness about DPs MIDI sequencing.. and its editors.. and #2 A certain cluelessness about the drum kit its self.

It turns out that DP will generally throw out a default velocity value of 64. Velocity, in MIDI, is a number between 1 and 128. Velocity represents how hard you hit a key on the keyboard. Now in the case of Battery and our Drum kit, this has two significant implications.

#1 How hard you hit a key impacts how load that instrument is going to play.. how sensitive a given instrument is to velocity is something that can generally be programmed into the instrument.. So.. bare this in mind..

#2 Battery has a hell of a lot of velocity layers in its sample maps…Ok.. this is going to take some explanation:  For the purposes of Battery, a sample map has two things to think about.. A, What drum are you hitting.. another words.. what key are you pressing.. depending on what key, that’s going to effect what sample.. is it a bass drum, or is it a snare drum? B, Velocity layers means.. at different velocities.. at different numbers between 1 and 128, different samples will get played.

It is perhaps important to note here that drums are a kind of instrument that are expressive in how hard they are hit, as well as there timing.. so to speak.. or lets say rhythm.. and will sound very different depending on how hard you hit them.. and indeed, on a real acoustic drum kit.. where on the drum head you hit them.. so they really do need to take advantage of velocity layers, right?

Ok.. Digital Performer sends a default value of 64… And I’m used to production environments that send a default value of 100.. that’s point one. Point 2 is we are dealing with an instrument that is deeply expressive relative to how hard you hit the thing.. that’s point two..

Now when I say a “default value” what I mean is.. you’ll open up an editor.. lets say a keyboard type editor.. and you’ll mouse onto a note on the keyboard to hear a sound.. by default you get 64.

If we compare this to Reason for a moment.. Reason is much less expressive then all this. In some cases Reason drums only have 3 velocity layers.. hell, maybe only one.. so if the entire expressive range of an instrument is squashed down to that.. and you’re used to be expressive in that world.. there’s a certain type of leap you need to make to be expressive in this here Digital Performer + Battery world.

Interestingly enough.. if you listen to my music.. you’ll note that an awful lot of what is going on is mixing.. it’s via mixing that I get expressive in how loud or soft sounds are.. generally. Or you might say that’s almost like my default way..

Ok.. I don’t mean to make this drone on forever, but now its time to bring up another thing.. that I think I meant to say in a blog entry sometime ago.. It’s as if I have music production skills that.. lets say were X deep by Y wide.. That depth and width is more then what I can bring into my consciousness in a single day of playing around.. What happens is.. I need to warm up.. and once I’m really warmed up.. why yes, velocity is absolutely something I’m expressive with.. but I’m not generally all that expressive with it when I’m just warming up. 

Arguably.. Digital Performer is set up to be more expressive in terms of velocity, by making 64 the default.  Believe it or not I was using Performer back in the early 90s.. when it was only a sequencer.. and at that time, velocity was the only way I was able to be expressive with volume.. though DP may have had some ability to automate mixes then that I might not have known about.. 

Ok.. so that covers the challenges of Battery, right?

Well next I gotta turn to Massive! 

By no means do I have a clue as to how to work Massive. About all I understand of Massive is that it has “some aggressive applications.” Well ok, I’ve read a little more then this about it.. but basically. 

Well, upon bringing Massive into the mix, the first thing I notice is that Massive overshadows all the other instruments in the mix.. or at least the patch I selected did. This is what we call in the biz “a problem.”

Mind you at this point we are just throwing paint on the wall.. eventually we will react to that paint, and develop something out of what we see in the wall.. so facilitating process is important.. and by Massive having this sort of effect.. well, that means we need to figure out how to approach process again…

Ok.. so the reason Massive is over shadowing all the other instruments is because it is a frequency hog! The job of the Mix engineer is to isolate the various instruments into there own frequency spaces.. so you can hear everything.. and Massive wants to be in everyone’s frequency space. The answer to this problem is simple, we call it EQ.

Or is it so simple? For starters DP offers us two EQs.. a parametric EQ and a “Master Works EQ,” which, as it turns out.. is a kind of parametric EQ.  Ok ok ok.. I know,  your asking “what the hell is a parametric eq anyway?”

Basically, all sound are fluctuations of amplitude across a frequency spectrum. Amplitude being loudness to softness.. frequency being something similar to pitch. With a parametric EQ, you first select what frequency you want to effect, you then choose how much you want to turn up or down that frequency, and then you decide how broadly you want the effect to happen.. the sort of curve if you will, around your target frequency. Make sense?

In Cubase you have 4 bands of parametric EQ as a default part of every channel in your mix… In DP you have to actually add plugs into to your channel to get your parametric EQ. In DP the Parametric EQ can have 2, 4, 0r 8 bands. The Master Works EQ in Digital Performer is a 5 band EQ, but its much more complex then just that.. enough so that it takes up 7 pages in the manuel.. and I haven’t gotten around to reading it all just yet.

Basically.. when you’re creating a mix, when your job is to isolate different parts of the mix into there own frequency space.. what you would conventionally do is throw a parametric EQ on each channel (or sub group, but I wont explain that here as that would only make this all too complex, not that it isn’t already).. and you would turn up the frequency that instrument was basically taking place in, and turn down the other frequency.. doing this with all the instruments.. taking instrument that occupied overlapping frequencies and putting them on opposite ends of the stereo field..

The trouble with my music is it’s “kinetic” which is my way of saying.. things move around.. and I like to have the freedom to move things around.. what this means is that if I’m to throw a parametric EQ on any channel.. I have to then automate that in a way that makes sense for what the content of that channel is doing at any particular moment.. which at the very least is an extra layer of labor for me.. which will impact process negatively.. at least until such time as I get warmed up..

A little latter:

I haven’t really gotten to the heart of the Reason VS DP + Komplete thing, have I? Or what I wanted to get to here. The best I can do, for tonight, is to say this is all but once small nuance. What I had wanted to get to talking about is working with REX files (a kind of loop technology) in Reason versus in Kontakt.. which will use REX, as I understand it.. but Kontakt is a very different sort of loop player then Dr. REX, as we find in Reason.

There’s a lot more going on in my production, that seems worth mentioning.. but alas I am too tired..

Right now my brain is turning towards.. well.. You know I hope you don’t take any of this as me putting down Reason.. Reason’s simplicity is what makes it great.. but what makes DP + Komplete + X great is its unbridled power.  This probably doesn’t make any sense as a way to assess these things.. but one way is to look at price tags.. my off the cuff statements here could be off by $100 here or there.. but you’ll get my drift.

Reason costs around $400 or $500. Digital Performer’s list price is around $800, or was last time I checked.. and Komplete’s was somewhere between $1500 and $1000… and probably a substantial savings at that. If We were to throw the mixing effects into the bag.. add another grand to that.. so how’s a $400 or $500 environment to compare with a $3000 environment?A little more if we were to add Kore to our equations?  My experience has been that the cost of software often has a certain relationship to it’s complexity.. and I must say that I feel like I’m jumping back into the deep end.

So far, and I haven’t scratched the surface.. I have to say that its “un fucking believable.” Massive, the more I listen to it.. and just that one patch I’m using.. It’s just amazing sounding. I mean it has all the richness of.. well lets say a guitar sound.. in a lot of ways.. I mean it has a lot of the character of it.. you could see it being in Marilyn Manson’s studio, or something..

And the drum kit I’m using.. gosh it just sounds so organic.. I find myself wanting to make the kinds of mixing decisions that I normally hear grammy award winning mix engineers talking about.. which is such a subtle craft.. I often wonder what the hell they are talking about.. but now I feel like I’m in a world where it all makes sense.. ahh but if only I had the money to get some good studio monitors and some acoustic treatment for my studio.. then I could really be in a position to make those kinds of critical judgements..  well I guess that’ll just have to wait for gainful employment or.. budget revaluations of what kind or another..

Well.. I figure I ought to try and post something before bed.. though I’m a little out of it.. I should be in bed now.

There’s events going on that bare speaking of..  On just how things are kind of progressing.

As I finally get around to sorta filling out this computer.. that is getting real software on it.. This here Mac Pro.. I can tell you this thing is bad ass as hell..  Mind you I’m still coming from a G4 perspective here.. but omg… I was goofing around with Photoshop open.. while at the same time I had Final Cut doing a batch capture… something I’m still not 100% on.. but basically you put a tape into your video camera.. you connect your camera up to your computer, and Final Cut controls your camera.. you go through the tape and select sections of the tape that you’d like to capture.. selecting in and out points.. and when you’re done, you tell it to do a batch capture.. and it brings that video onto your drives.

I’ve probably explained this, but just incase I haven’t.. My Mac Pro has 4 drives in it..  Two are set up as RAIDs.. basically you hook up two drives to work as one, and get about twice the performance out of those drives as you would from a single drive.. It has the unfortunate problem that if ether drive dies.. you loose all the data on that drive.. thus we call it a “scary raid.” I’m hoping that Blue Ray HD comes to the Mac soon.. primarily I think it’s an issue of the OS, so we’ll be waiting for the next OS to stop buy… and at that point… why Blue Rays will more then likely come to the Mac. You can currently buy Internal Blue Ray drives.. but I don’t know what the whole story is on this.. the problem would be that you wouldn’t be able to watch Blue Ray movies until this issue is worked out.. 

All of which is a bit of a side story.. I should go so far as to say that I’m waiting for Blue Ray HD burners.. because they would allow you to burn a huge amount of data to a Blue Ray disk.. which would give you a means of backing stuff up.. once my RAID fills up.. its close to one TB worth of storage on that drive.. I have another 500 GB drive where I intend to put stuff once it’s finished..

So we are digitizing via Final Cut, fooling around in Photoshop.. and then to make things even more fun.. playing a computer game.. all at the same time.. more or less.. and still I’m only using a small portion of the processor power.. which is a little on the mind blowing side for me. I mean you feel a little as if you’re using multiple computers at once..

I suppose this sorta opens the topic.. of just what is up now. As I think I’ve said else where.. I want to give myself about 6 months to play around with all this new technology.. before I start having high hopes of actually producing anything..  

I’m adding a huge amount of complexity to my world.. a huge amount to try and learn.. and hoping to learn it all in a ridiculously short period of time.. I mean.. what I’m talking about here is.. between Final Cut Studio, Adobe CS3 Web Premium… and then add to that Digital Performer.. Ableton Live.. Komplete 5 and Kore 2.. while I know my way around all this software, to some degree, as is.. the amount ahead of me to learn.. why that’s probably more then 6 months of learning… and then add to that After Effects, and some kind of serious 3D graphics tools.. 

Oh, well I’m too damn tired to try and get through this. So we’ll leave this as is.

It’s late at night, got lots to talk about, but probably won’t talk about a 10th of it.

One of the thoughts I’m thinking about.. is, “the magic.” I’ve written a rather long blog entry on this subject, not published.. and what’s worse is I now feel inspire to extent those ideas in new directions, but how can I do that without posting that last entry?  God, I got a lot of stuff I should post….  

So this subject of magic. This is a complex subject, but.. when I talk about magic, what I’m really talking about is something going on in my music right now.

It’s a strange thing.. you go out there and start hacking away.. and eventually things start coming together, but it doesn’t really feel like the coming together is really something you’re dong… its more like you’re a vessel of something.. you’re channeling it. If you were to take a very deep look at the creative process, you’d find that the artist is actually creating the work.. (I know, surprising, right?) but I mean.. the artist is creating “the magic.” 

All this talk is like back story… because I don’t really care to layout before you a psychology of the creative process at this time.. though this is no doubt a very interesting subject.. It’s more like there’s something going on in my work that compels me to write, and I should somehow find a way to speak to this…. so lets talk abut this from the angle of the music.

I have some kind of a system of composition. It’s a system from another planet, as I don’t really understand “how you’re supposed to make music.” It’s a system that is rich with my own inventions. I think most of the music we hear.. I don’t want to say it’s soo derivative.. but it is more conventional. My music is a kind of giant leap into the unknown.. and I think that’s the most compelling part of it.

It’s an attempt at invention.  You have a lot conceptual frameworks.. These frameworks are ways of thinking about various aspects of music making. This could be ideas about harmony, orchestration, counter point, melody, rhythm, mixing, process, sound synthesis, um.. a lot of different things.. These frameworks question the presumptions of the inherited views on these subjects… and they provide alternative answers to certain fundamental questions.

Why I tell you I don’t really understand the conventions.. I’m in part saying.. look, I rebelled very early in my artistic development.. So I never really listened to the conventions of tradition enough to really have a deep understanding of what all that is about. 

I don’t really take my frameworks too seriously.. or I should say that they are just ideas to get you part way there.. They are like a starting place. I suppose its like this idea that.. language has certain limitations for what it can say, what it can point to.. and what is really important is something beyond language… but of course language has it’s utility.. and it will take us part way there.

Eventually you have to put down all our ideas and simply have a direct experience..

I feel like I’m speaking in  such abstract terms..

Hmm.. some time ago I wrote a blog entry on “my process of philosophy,” which I think speaks to what I’m trying to get at here. For all intensive purposes, we are talking about a philosophy of music here.. all be it in a way that’s really.. kind of about process, and pragmatic issues of the artist.. It might not sound like there’s anything pragmatic about it.. but.. in my process of philosophy, though I don’t recall talking about “magic” does in fact talk about something that.. if I were talking about magic.. I’d eventually have to get to this…

Magic.. in part.. well here’s what you gotta do.. pay attention to details beyond the degree to which reason would suggest it as important. Pay attention to details for the purpose of the psychological process.. not just from the perspective of the logic of the physical universe.

Ok, here’s a quicky on “who God is.” (are you impressed by my balls yet? I mean to bring up God here?) God is a symbol for the unknown..  The deal is.. that the ratio of the known to the unknown is a ratio of 1 to infinity.. Our conception of reality is.. sorta ridiculous in relationship to “the real thing.” The meaning of anything has to do with context, and when you realize that the ultimate context of anything and everything is mystery.. my gosh.. interesting..  

So you see here,… my talk of mystery management.. is um.. perhaps a deeper idea then it might often seem.

Anyway.. so the point is.. paying attention to details beyond what rational ideas would suggest, in part.. is saying “listen I recognize that mystery has more to do with what makes the world go round then my conceptions.. and so for the sake of that, I should try to work beyond my understanding.”

So when I say something like “I feel like there’s something going on in my music,” what I mean is that there is something going on beyond my understanding.. that’s going on a level that is beyond what my conscious mind has consciously been creating.. my efforts to go beyond are starting to pay dividends.

It’s an effect of the interrelationships of the details I’ve been paying attention to. It’s the implications. 

Let see if I can explain how this works in a more tangible way:

At a certain point in the project I’m working on (as of this writing, you might be able to hear it here, though it shant be there for long).. at a certain point I start playing with microtonalism. I’m writing monophonic lines.. inside of a diatonic framework.. Each instrument is playing around with various chord tones.. but the microtonalism is abstracting it from there.. so that the actual harmonies, and counter point stuff, is not something you would find in your text books.. 

I understand that for the average reader.. what I’m talking about… it’s as if it were in a foreign language.. What I’m saying is something “a little technical” which has interesting implications.. which I’ve probably gone into in past blog entries somewhere.. for now I just want to say.. this is an example of a sort of crazy attention to details.

At the same time as this going on..  you have various blocks… where different instruments seem to be taking on different rolls, and what instrument performs what roll.. or how the the different instruments come together to divide of the labor of the rolls.. is in a constant state of flux.

Ok, hold up right here.. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time.. you’ll no doubt realize that that the “organizational principles” of the music I’m creating are following ideas I have concerning the organizational principles of social media..  my answers to “the technological disruption we are in the middle of.” So in a very interesting way.. the music is exploring social media / new media disruption..  This is something I’d like to go into more detail with but.. I’ll leave it here for now.

 Another aspect to all this that seems to me worth talking about is.. that I sorta approach the music making process from the stand point of a painter.. Or it seems more like the work of a painter then a music person. One are we this being realized is in the mix, and how the mix integrates into with the composition.. The instruments in our mix are in motion.. They are in motion in relationship to our listener.. the are close to us, they are far away from us, moving from one speaker to the next.. 

This is a sorta tricky juggling act..

Latter still:

well I must run.. got a Boston Media Makers thing to run off to.. so I’ll have to finish this up latter.

I’ve been thinking a bit about this blog, this site, projects, strategy, and blah blah blah… about where thing’s be at, and where I should like to take them…  Seems worthy of a little blogging, don’t cha think?

You know, social media.. a big part of it is “you should be your self:” Success in personal branding has something to do with authenticity. Mitch Joel talks about “the snow flake theory” in relationship to personal branding.. that we are all snow flakes, each individual, and thus we differentiate our selves via nature, as a pose to via consciouses will.. Ok, maybe Mitch doesn’t use anything like those words, but if he had my background he’d say it like that!

Yeah… so like.. I’ve been thinking about this sorta thing and thinking.. hmm.. sometimes I go into this super duper intellectual mode.. which is something I dig, to be sure..  but folks who have a different sort of insanity from my own… I think that kinda talk can produce certain digestive challenges. And it occurs to me, I have a whole lot of what we call in the biz “personality.” And that personality ain’t coming through so much… Or maybe it’s not that… maybe it’s just like.. I want to speak more freely.. or I want to do something.. I’m not even sure what it is.. It’s just that I feel it in my bones, do you know what I mean?

Anyway, I figure I need to blog more..  I’m thinking I’d like to have more blog entries.. probably shorter.. just like snippets of thoughts… Just little things. I also think there are certain “blog strategery” reasons for doing this.. 

I suppose a lot of what I’ve been doing with this blog is.. just getting my feet wet a bit. I mean I haven’t even been keeping this blog for that long.. since sometime around Boston Podcamp 2… so in so many ways I still feel the need to find my voice…

I mean.. how much of this should just be my personal voice? “And this is what I had for lunch today.” Can what a person had for lunch today be interesting? I tend to believe anything “could” be interesting.. depending where the beholder is coming from.. and I’m fascinated by consciousness.. as well as streams there of.. and I don’t mean to go so far as to talk about life casting.. but… there’s something in there of value to me.

A few latter:

So would you like to hear some thoughts about new things on the drawing boards? I’m thinking about creating some new podcasts…  The master podcast feed, for these, which would include them all, you can subscribe through iTunes by clicking here. Right now that’s a somewhat faded podcast.. But one idea I had was to have several things you subscribe to.. that would all be sorta “they come out when they come out,” which is to say producing regular content wouldn’t be on the agenda but…  One idea is to show works in progress.. as we speak I’m working on some new Reason content, and I’d love to be able to take you into the studio with me.. lets check this out.. Where I’d share these projects I’m working on.. and sorta talk about what they are all about..  

A whole lot latter:

In keeping with the notion of posting more often, and making them short, how about I post this now? 

It’s been a while, ha? Man, I’ve been suffering through a bit of a nightmare. My old computer died.. and with it all my passwords and user names.. and access to all my sites.. and so it’s taken me this long to get back in here.. I’ve been blogging, in the mean time, on my myspace.. if you’re into reading me and find  that nothings happening here.. that’s a place you could always go and look.

So lots has been happening since last I spoke here. I’m not even sure what I’ve said here and what I haven’t.. I don’t mean to repeat myself.. but um.. I don’t know, I think today’s blog post ought to be a random smattering of.. just whatever might be in my head and wanting to express its self.

I finally got Reason running on the new computer, and I’ve started my first project… Reason on a Mac Pro is very different then reason on a G4 Power Mac, or for that matter Reason on a budget PC laptop from a few years back. My suspicion is that Reason doesn’t have great multithreading.. which means it’s not great for taking advantage of multiple processor cores.. which is at the heart of what makes this new computer so powerful..   I’m only using, at the peak points of my current project, about 10% of my processing power, but Reason tells me I’m about half way through my processing power. I’m not sure exactly how this works but…

A big part of the difference, between working with Reason on the G4 versus Mac Pro, is how many effects and instruments you can use before your computer starts to choke. Normally I’m working under fairly strict restrictions.. but so far on the Mac Pro.. I have no sense of limitations.. or at least not of limitations that I in anyway feel.

The implication is… well I just keep throwing instruments and effects into the rack.. I’ll sorta be thinking “well, for the next section I want to sorta go in this direction” and I assemble a kind of sonic pallet for doing so.. but I feel as though I’m putting together a larger pallet then I’m actually using.. Or.. the project simply hasn’t grown into the pallet yet.

An implication of this is you’re projects can become a little unwieldy.. Suddenly you have to organize and manage about 10 or 20 times as much stuff.. You’re thinking along the lines “how can I take advantage of the power difference between the new system and the old one?” An obvious answer is that you’re now able to enter a world of sonic complexity that is many order of magnitudes beyond where you previously were at. All of which is great, but it also magnifies the labor in equal measure.

It’s been a little while since I’ve done much with Reason.. since I was doing serious sound work.. not since november really.. So a part of what I’m doing now is really just warming up.. really just sorta.. well trying to get to where I was at before.

You know.. my music production process is a little complicated. It’s the sorta thing where every breath you breath.. every bit of energy, you can put into it.. At that point there’s a richness, and a complexity.. that… well its as if your head can only hold so much at any given time.. and so to fully jump in these waters, you need to be willing to make a deep commitment..  and there’s a kind of transitional period between normal life, and the life of one who’s spending time in these waters.

Once I’m fully warmed up.. the challenge is to take this stuff to a whole new level. I suppose the trouble is that Reason is only a small fraction of the new software studio environment.. I’m also going from Live 6, to Live 7, going from Komplete 3 to Komplete 5, and going from a very old version of Digital Performer, that I never really mastered, to the new version. So as deeply as I might be trying to jump into Reason.. it’s really only a very small part of a larger world to jump into.

On my Zarmattathustra’s Deep Space Adventures project, I anticipated much of where I pan on going now. ZDPA was about trying to do the most I could with as little as I had.. that 867 G4…  So I explored creative possibilities that circumvented the limited processor resources.. which forced me to explore working in ways I hadn’t before. Well.. in many ways that’s where I’m going now.. accept add to that having a hell of a lot more power.. like maybe by a factor of 24 or so?

I’ve set before myself a notion of a project that would take 2 years to complete, but central in this notion is the idea of mystery. What this means is.. yeah, sure.. we have this 2 year guideline… but we don’t even know what the guideline really means!

Along time ago I was thinking.. If I could only get this set of tools together.. just imagine what I could do. Well, now its time to explore that for real. Will it be anywhere near my dreams? I don’t really know.

The guideline… lets just atomize it. Lets just talk about what we REALLY want to accomplish.. not what we think we should, or to worry about ways of rationalizing what we really want. I think there’s a sense of a timeline for skill development. Another words.. I’m interested in what I’ll be capable of at whatever period of time.. perhaps even more then I’m interested in producing finished, or great, product.

Another important thing is to actually produce finished project.. hopefully of some greatness.. and actually bring it to market, and try and make some money from it. Actually turn all this crazy art stuff into a business!

Do you spy a contradiction in here? Well I think what I’m saying is.. you could look at a 2 year span of time and think “what could I achieve in that time period?” I think what I’m saying is that my metric for success is not what I can achieve in that time period in a purely products sense.. I think product is a part of it.. is central to the journey and adventure.. but its needs to be balanced with other ends as well.. which must be given equal weight…. or weight equal to.. however important I want to make them.. Or I mean its an open question as to what the order of wills ought to be… this is a part of the mystery we must manage.

A few latter:

I think Reason is inspiring this thought.. along with the prospects of new sound software. In the mix of things I’m planning on taking on, sound is the part that I already have the strongest mastery of. Another words it doesn’t have a steep learning curve associated with it. I want to go nuts with music, but that doesn’t necessarily forward the cause of mastering steep learning curves, though it does further many things.

If sound were to be the center of what I’m doing.. Perhaps 3D and video.. perhaps I don’t need to bring these things to a super level of mastery.. I mean if these are projects that are more bout the sound then video.. I say this knowing full well that animation and motion graphics are important to me.. creating an aesthetic experience is important to me.. but maybe…

A few latter:

Well I guess the question could be like.. how complex a given thing is. Ok, we all know that high level 3D takes about 6 months to get so you can actually do it.. but lets say you carved out a kind of niche.. particular parts of the whole where you were to put your central focus on.

So lets say we want to start by creating some basic models… well maybe not all that basic but… If we are doing a space opera.. we probably want to build some space ships, some and some “sets.” If photography is playing a key roll in our adventures.. much of the sets could be.. almost like faux 3D.. like you take a photograph and cut it up, and use parts of it for different things.. instead of going to the trouble of modeling a forest.. you have pictures of clumps of forest.. maybe even video of forests… that get projected onto 3D Models that are.. well I don’t know what exactly.. but simple anyway. We’re not shooting for realism.. we are abstracting things, surreal-izing them if you will. And doing so in such a way that they require less mastery of the over all learning curve.

And we’d probably want to create some characters in here somewhere.. but the point is.. is it possible to get great results by limiting our scope in certain areas.. there by managing the learning demands? If I can create a visual language that only uses a part of the total tool set.. I can then bring that to mastery in a much shorter time period.  

Latter:

Ok, lets post this sucker. 

Well I’m back from my shopping spree… and so here I am, blogging the story.

It started with the realization that via my Father’s ATM card I could get $1K out of the ATM at a shot.. so out to the ATM we go.. but apparently the ATM didn’t want to give me $1K. Ok, I’m new to all this stuff… but what the hell? Why is banking such a pain in the ass?

From here it was off to Guitar Center, they where having some sort of mysterious sale. Guitar Center is a somewhat evil institution.. or it seems to me this way every time I go.. Well sometimes they can be cool.. I actually am on something close to a first name basis with many of them… after all I seem to be helping them put there kids through college and all that.. but I don’t really trust these guys..

Do to the mysterious sale, the place was pretty crowded.. a sales guy.. trying to get buy.. sorta bumping into me.. you end up bumping into people an awful lot at times like these.. And just the way the guy calls me.. “buddy” or was it “partner” or I don’t know what it was.. but it was definitely creepy. 

Prior to leaving the house, I had kind of gone over my budget to see where I was.. and what I discovered was.. well that what I’ve been looking to buy is a little bit more then what I’ve budgeted for. This meant today’s shopping spree would likely be less then I had planned.

It turned out, there was no compelling reason for me to spend any money at Guitar Center.  So it was off to Microcenter.

I haven’t really done too much shopping at Microcenter.. but I don’t know of two many computer stores closer by.. I recently took a field trip to the local best buy and.. well I was unimpressed… It’s surely the place someone goes when one doesn’t know any better…  So it was off to Microcenter, which was way off in Boston. (more then a 44 min drive)

I had gotten a little news paper thing with various sales.. They had 500 GB SATA hard drives, on sale, for $104. I’m planning on working with high definition video… and even with standard definition video.. you never really have enough hard disk space when working with video. So I thought “hmm, maybe I should get 3 of these” and I did.

The sales people at Microcenter, as near I can tell, work on commissions… but unlike Guitar Center, I’m inclined to trust these guys.. And unlike an Apple store.. you get the feeling that we are in touch with reality at Microcenter, as a pose to being in touch with our desire, at the expense of reality, as we are at Apple. In fact I was really blown away by how good the shopping experience was at Microcenter.

Next morning:

My “tool budget” was really something I did to try and give me a framework for thinking.. so that I wouldn’t go too crazy.. one must be smart about these things.. its just a way of.. thinking through this stuff.

One of the things you get into is.. if you shoot off in 5 different directions, you can’t really go as deeply as if you just went in one. I suppose it’s all about trade offs.  The question is, what and where do you want to make your trade offs?

For me there’s a real process to all this.. a process that’s like a spider weaving his web.. he doesn’t think about how he’s going to build the web, he simply does it out of his nature. So.. I guess what I’m doing is trying to explore all these subjects in order to get an image of these worlds.. that’s one phase. Another phase is dreaming about what you want to do.. what you could do.

This is sorta like my process in general..  I’m thinking mostly intellectually: I have so many ideas that I work through, so much information that I’m always processing, that it’s entirely impossible to keep it all in my head at any one time..  So there are often times where I find myself in a position where I have no idea how I got there.. Or sometimes you’re positions come under pressure.. where you are forced to articulate you’re position… in order to maintain your ground.

To the subject of budgets.. it’s a little like this.. like “why am I making these choices, or thinking in these ways?” Well, I take a step back and realize that my true center has something to do with multimedia.. I like the camera I do.. because its perfect for just putting in your pocket, it’s not really that expensive, and it’s capable of great results. Sure.. It doesn’t put me in the greatest position to call myself a serious videographer.. but you know what? I’m not really trying to be a serious videographer. I mean sure, I want to make this feature length film.. do this crazy project.. and make it amazing..

But in a lot of ways the film is more about sound then it is about video… to say nothing of animation.. I mean the sound is probably going to be the center of it all. Hmm.. as I think about it now, I realize I haven’t posted any of the drafts that talk about the actual project ideas.. so I guess this is just a preview of it?

Anyway, my point is that it’s all just a part of the process.. and exploring that process seems something worthy of  blogging about.